We understand, believe me. Here at F12, we have spent countless, frustrating hours waiting on hold, verifying our identification, being hung up on, getting transferred from person to person, explaining the issue over and over again…only to call back when the promised fix never materialized. Often we do this on behalf of our clients, calling the world’s largest companies to get issues resolved from people who just don’t seem to care.
We get it. Help desks possess a bad reputation for a reason.
Some in our industry say the model is broken. Throw away the help desk and go back to having your “IT guy” pop by on a regular basis and handle all your issues directly. We say, if you feel that eradicating the help desk is the only way forward, well then you have been doing remote services all wrong.
Other IT service providers mislead. They state that you will not have to call a help desk. So, what happens when your assigned primary IT resource is unavailable? No worries, there is a call center to help out. No help desk you say…or just one you are not proud of?
The truth is, creating a help desk that doesn’t exasperate is not easy; creating one that delivers client happiness and strengthens relationships is supremely difficult. In fact, many in our industry are desperate to outsource remote services. Let someone else, possibly someone in another country, figure out the people, process and discipline needed to make it excellent.
We believe the answer to the help desk dilemma is not to abandon remote support services; the answer is to do it better. To be effective, a remote service absolutely must:
- Be a small team that knows the customer
- Be a friendly team that likes what they do and where they work
- Have impeccable documentation and procedures
- Separate between reactive services and proactive services
- Be accountable to customer satisfaction and service metrics
F12 created the Pod model to provide better customer service. Small, industry-focused teams are assigned to client subsets. These teams get to know the nuances of the organizations they work closely with, including their processes, systems and employee cultures. Rather than hide our remote services teams, we are proud of them.
After years of hard work, openness to criticism, and cultivating a dedicated, humble team, F12 has learned that running a better help desk is possible. Clients routinely compliment us on our remote support technicians. They like them, they trust them, they will share laughs and family photos with them. It can happen. It does at F12, every day.
Numbers we are proud of:
- 96% customer satisfaction
- 95% of issues solved remotely
- Average call wait time is 20 seconds
- Average issue response time is less than 24 minutes
Help desks can actually be an incredible asset, if you select an IT managed service provider that understands how to use them in a way that resolves issues, instead of in a way that causes more of them.
F12 offers help desk IT support in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Vancouver, Victoria, Nelson, Vernon, Courtenay, and Markham.
Richard Bongard
F12.net, Inc.
Director of Network Operations